


apple juice and peach

by primaveracerezos



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on a dodie Song, Bisexual Ginny Weasley, Canon Ginny/Dean Thomas, Canon Ginny/Harry, Canon Ginny/Michael Corner, Coming Out, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Homophobia, POV Ginny Weasley, Peaches - Freeform, Some angst, linny - Freeform, mentions het snogging, queer charlie weasley, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25947025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primaveracerezos/pseuds/primaveracerezos
Summary: A ficlet about coming out and finding your place; sometimes your place is with a person.
Relationships: Dean Thomas/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Michael Corner/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 17
Kudos: 94





	apple juice and peach

**Author's Note:**

> Title and some details from [She by dodie](https://open.spotify.com/track/45h4w81P5iJJTSeR0jJUQ8?si=rPe2YMOhQjuLMzxLikHkmw). 
> 
> TW: Discusses grief after death of loved ones (not in detail, but it's there) and internalized homophobia.
> 
> Thanks to kittycargo for the beta and love!

_Am I allowed to look at her like that?  
Could it be wrong when she’s just so nice to look at?_

_She smells like lemongrass and sleep  
She tastes like apple juice and peach  
Oh you would find her in a Polaroid picture  
And she means everything to me_

~

Ginny grew up with six older brothers. Her mother taught her at home until she went to Hogwarts. As a young child, her friends were the bowtruckles hidden in the trees, the gnomes making rude gestures in the garden, and sometimes Ron. Until she was eleven, Ginny didn’t have friends who were girls. 

This, she reasoned, was why she was confused about it all.

Her brothers always talked about girls; Fred and George teased Percy while Bill proudly introduced his girlfriends. Ron fumbled around Hermione like a troll with a blushing problem. Ginny’s only example of how to like boys was in Charlie, who spent more time going on about dragons than the boys he was interested in. 

And anyway, Ginny had better things to do than obsess over boys. Once she recovered from her starstruck crush on Harry, she found she was more interested in beating her brothers at Quidditch (and everything else) and learning how to be a girl around her dormmates, which turned out to be more about being brave and gentle and strong than about painting fingernails and coiffing hair. Luckily. 

One night in third year, Ginny was lying in bed listening to Ruth Crowley giggle about how being near Jakob Fanning gave her butterflies in her stomach. Ginny considered this statement; she had felt suitably nauseated around Harry, yes, but it occurred to her that last year she had been quite fond of Tilda Greco, her Hufflepuff potions partner. _She gave me butterflies_ , thought Ginny, and then she immediately squashed the thought. Tilda had been a good potions partner and kind besides, but she was a girl. 

Ginny decided she wouldn’t think of it again. She shot a silencing spell at Ruth and went to sleep. 

Michael Corner burst into her life that year all sweaty and smiling in his Yule Ball dress robes, and Ginny liked him immensely. He was kind to her, and witty, and she liked the way his hands looked, fingernails neat and clean. She liked being near him and she loved that he talked about how pretty she was all the time. His letters over the summer were sweet, if a little boring, but nevertheless a distraction from the gloom of Grimmauld Place. 

Ginny talked to Hermione about Michael to share the diversion. They laid in their beds in their little room at Grimmauld, the dark so heavy Ginny could feel it pressing around her, and they whispered for hours about anything except the Order. When they went to bed early, Ginny could see Hermione’s outline against the fading light from the window; she loved those nights. She wondered what it would be like to rest her hand in the dip of Hermione’s side. Warm, soft, safe. 

It was easy to be Michael’s girlfriend at Hogwarts. He never fought with her, even when she picked fights on purpose. She found it irritating that he couldn’t disarm her in DA practice, but she supposed that was a sign that he was a good boyfriend. Hermione certainly thought so, and she was the only person Ginny trusted enough to be honest. The girls in her dorm were forever curious about what Ginny and Michael were getting up to when they were alone, so Ginny regaled them with salacious tales of library snogging. 

But while the kissing was nice, Ginny found herself bored with Michael. He was just so predictable. She needed excitement, she decided. Someone with more charisma and far less pouting. 

She noticed, of course, the warmth she felt when dueling with Luna, listening to her wild stories, taking in her wacky accessories. _This is how friends feel about each other_ , she thought. Wanting to be together all the time. The feeling of excitement seeing her each morning. That’s friendship. 

Luna was affectionate with Ginny, always petting her hair and holding her hand, but Ginny supposed that was because no one else was very close to Luna. People always sort of held her at arm’s length, but Ginny liked being near her. She smelled nice, like bedsheets and lemongrass and fall. 

~

Somehow life went on even as the war began, and Ginny felt like she lived two lives. She started dating Dean Thomas, who was deadly handsome and a wicked kisser; she made Chaser on the Gryffindor team; she teased Luna for eating a peach and apple juice for breakfast each morning (“A peach a day keeps the nargles away!”). And yet at the same time, people started disappearing, dying; a cloak of fear settled over everything she did. 

And then there was Harry, brave, heroic Harry who would save them all, and hadn’t he always been there, waiting? Harry, who was like family--it was like they were already married, really. It was fate, meant to be. And he didn’t mind that Ginny walked the halls hand in hand with Luna, nor did he notice that Ginny spent more time with Luna than with him. After all, Harry was busy saving the world with Dumbledore. Ginny would support him and love him, because that was apparently her role in it all. It gave her a purpose, a target to point at; something to ease the cognitive dissonance when she was laughing with Luna on the shores of the lake even while there was a war on. 

When Harry left to do whatever it was he needed to do, Ginny was okay with that too.

The war did come to Hogwarts, eventually. With Harry gone, the Carrows like poisonous little toddlers running the school, Ginny thought, Well, maybe this is my place too. She felt at home living in the Room of Requirement, sneaking in food and disobedient students, researching defensive magic. She came from a line of rebels; her family fought on the front lines against the evil pressing in. To serve this way, protecting Hogwarts, felt natural. 

At night, she shared a cot with Luna. If Ginny curled against Luna’s side, if Luna wrapped herself around Ginny, it was because of the fear they both felt but could never acknowledge. Nothing more. 

But Ginny always managed to find peaches for Luna’s breakfast. 

~

After the war was rebuilding and trials and funerals and overwhelming, suffocating grief. Ginny, always so fierce and brave, felt like someone had tied a rope around her and was dragging her through a future she never wanted. When she wasn’t numb, she was underwater, gasping for each breath between sobs. They won the war, but this wasn’t winning like she was used to--there was no triumph or celebration, just a forever aching, hollow place where the past had been. 

The very last thing Ginny wanted was love, but it broke over her like a wave. She sat wrapped in a ball, crying after another procession and another set of eulogies, her head on her knees. A hand brushed her hair, and she looked up to see Luna there, dark circles under her impossibly blue eyes. Without a word, Luna took Ginny in her arms, pulled her all the way close, and Ginny smelled her familiar lemongrass-clean smell, and she felt butterflies in her stomach. 

They spent nearly every moment together after that. Luna didn’t make Ginny talk, but she didn’t tiptoe around the names of the dead like everyone else did. She spoke freely about their days in hiding, about the games of exploding snap they’d played to pass the brutal hours. She didn’t keep herself to hushed whispers or grieved screams; her voice, as always, was musical and soft and curious. Ginny thought she could listen to Luna read a receipt and be captivated. 

Luna moved into her bedroom at the Burrow; or rather, one day she didn’t live there, and the next day she did. They shared Ginny’s little bed, just like their old cot. Luna’s even, slow breaths against Ginny’s neck rocked her to sleep every night, Luna’s arms wrapped protectively around her. It felt like safety, like certainty. 

IIt was late summer when Luna kissed her. They laid in the garden on a blanket, drinking in the still heat, and maybe Ginny stared too long, but Luna’s eyelashes were golden this close up, and her lips were perfectly pink, likebreakfast peaches, ripe and sweet. When Luna pressed their mouths together, gentle like everything Luna did, Ginny thought, _Oh._

_Oh, that’s what I’ve been feeling._

Luna tasted like peach and sun and home. Ginny would never leave.

**Author's Note:**

> I want to note something that I think might read as an inconsistency: Ginny feels she can't be attracted to other girls even though Charlie is openly queer. It's not an issue within her family; she just has internalized that she is Not Queer. I think this is something that happens with a lot of queer folks, including myself. Even if we're not explicitly told ~homoesexuality is wrong~ homophobia is embedded in our culture. It takes a lot of work to undo those effects.
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3 Find me on [tumblr](primavera-cerezos.tumblr.com).


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